My Guru and His Disciple

by Christopher Isherwood

  September 28. Talked to the Swami on the phone. He is ready to write a letter to the draft board, backing up my appeal for reclassification. But first he wanted me to reassure him that I really intend to become a monk. I said yes of course—but later I was bothered by all kinds of doubts. Just what does the Swami mean by “monk”? One who takes the vows of chastity and poverty? Or one who belongs, specifically, to the Ramakrishna Order, conducts lecture courses, officiates at the rituals, and goes to lunch with householder devotees in their expensive houses. I’ll see him tomorrow and ask him.

  September 29. As I expected, the Swami waved my doubts aside. Of course, he said, I wouldn’t be asked to do things I wasn’t fitted for or wasn’t inclined to do.

  October 12. Most days, I see the Swami and we work together on his translation of the Gita, turning it into more flexible English. This is a very valuable way of studying, because I have to make absolutely sure I understand what each verse means. Some of the Sanskrit words have meanings which sound bizarre in English, and the Swami, who has long since learnt to paraphrase them, has to be practically psychoanalyzed before he’ll admit to the literal translation.

  No call from the draft board yet.

  There never was a call. Nor any answer to my application for 4-D. This silence was explained when the authorities later announced that they were lowering the upper draft-age limit to thirty-seven. By that time, I was well into my thirty-ninth year.

  January 29, 1943. The opening of Brahmananda Cottage (as the Swami has christened the house where we’re to live, at the Vedanta Center) is still fixed for the sixth of February. At the moment, this, and all that it implies, seems utterly remote and unreal. I told the Swami some weeks ago, “I’ve been ten thousand miles away from you.

  Daydreams of a “last fling.” Some part of me is irrationally convinced that somehow someone will show up to give me a glamorous final twenty-four hours of sex in the best Elinor Glyn style.

  February 3. Lunch with Berthold Viertel. Talked about my move to the Center. He disapproves of it with all the jealousy of his fatherly affection. A return to the Quakers he could understand, a retirement into an ivory-tower life of novel writing he could understand. But why am I joining these obsolete Hindus? What possible relevance can their beliefs have to the world of 1943?

  Berthold feels a deep suspicion of Gerald, whom he naturally associates with Vedanta and the Swami. He asked, “Would you be doing this if you’d never met Heard?”—as though he expected the question to disconcert and perhaps enrage me. “Would I have written for the movies,” I countered, “if I’d never met you?”

  In the afternoon, I called Denny on the phone, up at the forestry camp. He seems to be completely happy there. He has been skiing. He showed no special desire to come down and visit us.

  Supper with Chris Wood. Afterwards, we went to the Club Gala. I haven’t been to a place of this sort in ages, and it was so nostalgically reminiscent of all the other times—the baroque decorations and the cozy red velvet corners, the sharp-faced peroxide pianist with tender memories and a tongue like an adder, the grizzled tomcat tenor, the lame celebrity, the bar mimosa, the public lovers, the amazed millionaire tourist and the daydream sailor. I have loved them all very much. I owe them many of my vividest moments of awareness. But enough is enough. And here we say goodbye.

  Or do we? Isn’t this entirely the wrong spirit in which to become a monk? I am not going to the Center to forget such places. No—if this training succeeds, I shall be able to return to the Gala, or any other scene of the past, with the kind of understanding which sees what they are really all about.

  Eight

  Against my will, terrified, helplessly attracted, I cross the vast empty courtyard in blazing sunlight, pull the bell chain—clang, the grim ironbound wicket opens. They are all inside, in the shadows, cowled and black-robed, waiting for me. Within a moment, they have stripped me of my clothes and forcibly robed me. I stammer the irrevocable vow. I vanish into silence and an eternal indoors, trapped by the Trappists, a monk!

  This youthful fantasy-farce—inspired by The Garden of Allah and the anti-Catholic horror tales of my Protestant upbringing—kept recalling itself to my mind and making me grin as I took part in the events of February 6; the service in the temple, the dedication of Brahmananda Cottage with a homa fire in its living room, the reception afterwards, at which the inmates of the Center mingled with the householders of the congregation, amidst much eating, photography, gush, and chatter. The atmosphere of this last scene reminded me strongly of life in Quakerdom.

  We four male monastics were on display, embarrassed, robeless, and quite unmonklike, in our Sunday suits. Prabhavananda wore his robes for the occasion, and only he seemed at ease, beaming and delighted because Maharaj’s work was going forward, the Center was growing bigger. In recognition of my own altered status, he had now stopped calling me Mr. Isherwood and started calling me Chris—he pronounced it “Krees.” (In my diary I began to reciprocate by referring to him as Swami instead of the Swami.)

  * * *

  Brahmananda Cottage was number 1942 Ivar Avenue. The temple stood between it and number 1946. These three buildings could hardly have been less alike—1942 was a small, Spanish-style, stucco-walled house with a tiled roof—yet they formed a kind of unit simply by being so close together; there were only a few yards between them. It seemed absurd to think of 1946 as a convent and of 1942 as a monastery in the ordinary sense of the words, for how could nuns and monks be isolated from each other when they were living at such close quarters? In fact, the inmates of the Center were now like members of a family. The men shared many occupations with the women, and they were in and out of each other’s houses all day long. We only separated to sleep.

  * * *

  February 8, 1943. Well, now that we’ve slept two nights in Brahmananda Cottage, now that the mimosa is withering in the vases and the homa fire leaves no trace beyond a stain of clarified butter on the hearth—is there anything I can say about the monastic life?

  No. Nothing. As a matter of fact, my unconscious hasn’t even cocked an eyebrow or twitched an ear, yet. And, for the next two or three weeks, it probably won’t. Like a drunk who has been pitched into the lockup, it just lies there snoring, quite unaware that it can’t get out. When it begins to wake up, I suppose the trouble will start.

  The trouble started in much less than three weeks, with Asit, Swami’s nephew. (Given its proper Bengali pronunciation, his name would have been approximately Osshit. Since that would have sounded improper or funny to American ears, it had been decided to call him Ossid.) Asit was a slim lively attractive Bengali boy of about twenty-five. He had come to the States on a visit, some years previously, and now he couldn’t go back, because of the war. He was a student at the University of Southern California, where he had already graduated in cinematography. He wanted to return to India as soon as possible and be a film director.

  Asit was a conventionally pious Hindu but he had no intention of becoming a monk. It had been simply a matter of convenience to put him up in Brahmananda Cottage for the time being. He had seen to it that he got the best room, in the way he got everything that he wanted—by alternately coaxing and bullying the women. He took it for granted that women are born to wait on men—on Hindu men, at any rate—and the women seemed to accept this, although they often scolded him for his laziness and untidiness.

  I myself had to sleep in a dark little anteroom, with only a closed door between me and Asit’s radio, which he was apt to play at almost any hour of the day or night. Since working at the Haverford hostel, I had fondly imagined that I was well adjusted to group living. But at Haverford I had had an isolated bedroom in a neighbor’s house and had never been exposed to this kind of invasion of privacy.

  Like Swami, Asit took a special attitude toward me because I was British, but it was a different kind of attitude. His manner alternated between the aggressive, the suspicious, the deferential, and the flattering. Whenever the newspape
rs reported some British political action in India, he would teasingly insinuate that I shared responsibility for it. Sometimes I found this amusing, sometimes I lost my temper childishly.

  When I asked Asit, as politely as I could, to please not play his radio at certain times, he was up in arms against me as an embodiment of British tyranny. So a battle of wills was joined. This battle cost Asit nothing, emotionally, because to him it was just a game—twisting the British Lion’s tail. But it caused me to suffer sudden spasms of rage which could make meditation impossible.

  * * *

  My three brother probationers were George, Webster, and Richard. Everybody, including Swami, spoke of us as monks, but, strictly speaking, we had no right to that title, since we had taken no vows. According to the rules of the Ramakrishna Order, the first vows, called brahmacharya, can be taken only after a minimum probation period of five years. Our so-called nuns weren’t really nuns yet, either.

  George was a man of about my own age, lean and rugged and nearly bald, taciturn but capable of growly-voiced satirical remarks. His bedroom and bathroom formed a separate apartment, with an outside entrance of its own and no connecting door to the rest of the house. He had paid for this reconstruction. He was jealous of his privacy and it was seldom that he invited any of us to come inside. As time passed, he covered every inch of his wall space with photographs—enlargements (some of them huge) of the available pictures of Ramakrishna, Holy Mother, Brahmananda, and Vivekananda, and snapshots of Swami taken by George himself. On the tables and chairs were more pictures, together with statuettes of deities and jars full of flowers which had been offered before the shrine. Many of these he kept until they were withered and foul-smelling.

  We made fun of George as an eccentric, even to his face, but he soon became an affectionately respected figure in our family. We respected him because he seemed to be living with such single-mindedness, spending almost all of his time in Swami’s presence or else alone. He would sit on the floor in a corner, so that the rest of us scarcely noticed him, and write down Swami’s remarks, even the most commonplace of them, in a notebook. Swami would often laughingly protest against this, but George had the obstinacy of devotion; nothing could stop his note taking or his photography. He also wire-recorded Swami’s Sunday lectures and weekday classes. Sometimes, after most of us were in bed, he would type these up in his apartment. The recorder would relay Swami’s voice at full volume, and George, as he typed, would chant even louder, in Sanskrit. You could hear him all over the house and outside on the street. I never minded George’s chanting the way I minded the chattering of Asit’s radio—not because the one was sacred and the other profane, but because George was George, everything he did seemed natural, it couldn’t be otherwise. So you accepted it.

  * * *

  The remaining bedroom in Brahmananda Cottage was shared by Webster and Richard. They were both seventeen. Webster’s favorite sport was judo. His short, immensely strong body was covered with curly black fuzz, as if to compensate for the hair he was already beginning to lose from his head. His face was clean-cut and shiny with health—it was the face of a slow, careful, serious thinker, obstinate but very good-natured. He had a great aptitude for carpentry and other branches of housebuilding. At the age of fourteen he had decided that he was going to become a monk when he was older. His mother was a Vedanta devotee, so she hadn’t opposed him. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference if she had.

  Richard was curly-haired and brown-eyed, with a comically crafty expression which prevented his face from being conventionally handsome; he reminded me of a bear. He was much taller than Webster and his smooth-skinned body was beautifully proportioned and muscled; he had developed it by barbell exercises. Both of Richard’s parents were Vedanta devotees and, at the same time, earnest middle-class moralists—which may explain why Richard felt a genuine religious vocation but resisted it violently. We never knew, from one day to the next, if he would stay at the Center. Richard didn’t appear to know, himself. At least, that was the impression he liked to give. He was a subtle, teasing playactor who enjoyed keeping us guessing.

  Webster loved Richard dearly and used all his influence to prevent him from leaving. When Richard disappeared for hours into Hollywood and Swami asked where he was, Webster would try to cover up for him or, in extreme cases, go out to look for him and fetch him back. Actually, Richard would be found doing something quite harmless, such as eating ice cream with friends, but he was so secretive about his absences that he might as well have been to a whorehouse. Both he and Webster were students at Hollywood High School—not an ideal training place for would-be monks.

  February 26. Richard was suspended from school the day before yesterday—for doing handstands on the scaffolding around a sixty-foot smokestack in the playground. It was during the lunch hour, with a big crowd watching. Now, of course, he’s the students’ number-one hero. He says he wants to leave here, get a job at Warner’s Theater as an usher and enjoy the pleasures of “the world.” I should be the last to laugh. If anybody can understand Rich, it ought to be myself.

  And yet it’s a disaster. Imagine discovering this place and this way of life at seventeen, and not being able to hold on to it! And then having to crawl back, inch by inch, at my age or maybe older. I’m still hanging on by the eyelids myself after nearly three weeks. I’ve got to convince myself, practically, that the shrine can give me strength to do what I could never do alone.

  The shrine is like a bank, in which we have put our money and can never draw it out again. But it pays interest, so the only thing to do is to deposit more and more and more. It’s the shrine that really matters; the fact of its being there, always, right in the midst of our household. It’s particularly wonderful at night. You feel so safe there and there is such a sense of contact. Like sitting face to face with someone you know very well, and not having to speak.

  In the next room, Asit and Richard are discussing Rich’s future. I can hear every word through the door. “Well, go ahead,” giggles Asit. “Marry—get some keeds!” And Rich, who is thoroughly enjoying the conversation, answers, “But I don’t want that. I want to be a vagabond.”

  He is always telling us this. His daydream figure is the wandering, drunken philosopher. Somehow or other, he found out about Rimbaud and pestered me until I lent him my copy of A Season in Hell. (I’ve brought a few books with me here, thinking of them as necessary personal possessions, like clothing. I never foresaw that they might become liabilities!) Now Rich is going around repeating delightedly, “The best thing is a good drunken sleep on a sandy beach.” If Swami hears him, I shall have some explaining to do.

  March 1. Richard finally decided to stay, after a last-minute interview with Swami during which he apparently went through every mood known to psychology. Part of Rich is so sincere that it makes you want to cry; part of him is quite cynically cunning—as when he plays up to Swami and pretends to be under the influence of Swami’s hypnotic power.

  The other day, while Swami was out, Rich sat in Swami’s place on the living-room sofa and imitated him puffing at his cigarettes and curling up his toes. The girls and I pretended to be his disciples and asked him questions. “Swami,” said one of them, very wide-eyed, “what shall I do? I don’t have the time to meditate. I’m so involved in the cares of the world.” “Aw wairl,” replied Rich, absolutely dead-pan, catching Swami’s accent perfectly, “jarst try to think of Gard okezzshionally.” When Swami heard about this, he was delighted.

  We found a prose poem which Rich had typed out and hidden at the back of the shrine. It was called “A Farewell to Vedanta.” I can remember only one bit of it: “As I lifted my weights, may I lift the weight of my ignorance … As I climbed to heights unknown, so may I climb toward Thee.”

  “Heights unknown” referred, of course, to the smokestack. Swami and I went round to interview the principal of Hollywood High this morning and plead (unsuccessfully) to have Rich taken back. The principal was a desolate shattered
figure in the midst of utter confusion. One had the impression that he and his staff had long since lost control of the huge hygienic rowdy school and its gang of sexy students. Wearily, he pointed out to us that Rich has scarcely attended a single class in any subject; some of his teachers don’t even know what he looks like. As for the principal himself, he seems resigned to rudeness, ignorance, inattention, venereal disease, illegitimate babies, and sex in every form—but he still has one proud boast: no student has ever actually met a violent death on the premises, and no student shall, if he can help it. On this point, he is really obstinate. “Why,” he exclaimed, “it would be in every newspaper in the country!” He took it for granted that Richard’s parents would have sued the school if Richard had fallen.

  As we were driving away, we passed the celebrated smokestack. It looked horribly dangerous. The scaffolding seemed insecure, and a fall could only have been onto asphalt or a spiked iron fence. Swami folded his hands, glanced upward for a second, and murmured, “May I have that courage!”

  So Rich is to stay home, and study Vedanta and try to be a real monk. For a month’s trial.

  * * *

  I was fond of Webster and Richard but I couldn’t quite think of them as my brothers; after all, they were young enough to be my sons. I would have been glad indeed to have George for a brother; but, in those days, he seemed impossible to get close to. Whenever I spoke to him, he was friendly, but he kept retiring into non-communication, either by starting his note taking or going to the shrine or shutting himself up in his apartment. Even when we were washing dishes together after meals, he would chant to himself, and I didn’t like to interrupt him by talking.

  I also felt a distance between myself and Sister Lalita. This wasn’t so much because of her age. She was an intelligent and active old lady who read radical magazines and loved gardening. (Swami complained that she would never let anything grow, because she kept changing her mind and transplanting flowers from one corner of the garden to another.) Our relations were inhibited by her extreme politeness. It seemed to me that she thought of herself as our hostess, with obligations toward us as guests. And, in addition to this, she often inspired me with awe. She had actually known Vivekananda! This fact came home to me with special force and strangeness when I watched her in the shrine room. She had an air of unobtrusiveness which was somehow majestic. She made me think of Holy Mother as Swami had described her to us, sitting quietly by the roadside, in front of the inn.